"Hi Elias, I have no recollection of any printing experiment and I outsourced that printing anyway. Simply as a guess, it's possible that the ink could have been affected by plastic covering, environmental factors, etc." - Mike Caldwell




Correct, I am acting as a broker, connecting buyers and sellers. I have done such sales privately between buyer and seller, but I am moving to do many of these sales openly on the forum as well.
In making the listings, I will be checking the images of coins and to the best of my knowledge, ensuring that they are legitimate. This due diligence includes is the same level that any buyer can reasonably perform when buying a coin; visual inspection. Any coin being sold via CoinFIRM is legitimate in my eyes; some may choose to put value on my judgment others may not.

While I would only sell coins in which I have full confidence, I cannot personally guarantee them because if someone were to successfully design an excellent copy of the hologram (or pull off a successful re-attachment), it would lead to my financial ruin.

As for recourse, the first line would involve me contacting the seller and seeing if things can be worked out. If I am satisfied that the seller perpetrated some kind of fraud, then any information I have about them would be made available for any civil action or recourse that the defrauded party wants to take.


P.s. It is interesting that the printing was outsourced. I was not aware of that.

I have contacted Mike.

http://imgur.com/a/sxq1q

Here is an album for examination. Let me know what you think.

I agree. The owner of this says he got them all from Casascius in 2011, and did a copy/paste of the 'receipt' email. I dont think there is anything going on here, but can never be too careful with a 100 BTC coin.

Of note is that the 500 & 1,000 btc bars dont have the firstbits printed at all.. they are lasered (if i recall).

Photo updated

If i win at 0.03, I'm disappointed with all of you. you guys should know better 

#94 bronze please!

.03

I received this PM yesterday:



It has what looks like a BCT link, but when you hover over it you see that it really opens in a different domain (as seen on bottom left). I checked it on my smartphone, and it turns out to be a page that looks identical to the BCT login page, with your name already in the field.. all you need to do is write in your password and click 'login'.

You have been warned.

.02
Also, I believe the image here is the first of the back of this coin without the sticker. It may have a place in a later book edition.

I consider this coin rather significant and rare.

old thread, please delete

old thread, please delete

old thread, please delete

Located in EU

Seller is flexible with how exactly the deal is handled. Not in a hurry to sell.
This is one of 16 remaining in its class.

http://imgur.com/A8HfkJ5

Note that it seems that the first-bits appear to be thicker than most of Casascius coins. Can anyone link to other cases of this?

At the end of the day, that's really it. I've lost regrettable amounts of BTC to scams, thefts, exchange hacks, and terrible trading decisions. But I've never lost any bitcoins I have in solid form.. well, except that one Casascius coin that I left on a park bench (damn.. ).
I can totally see why people like to own physical coins for the security.

We plan to have much cheaper paperbacks with the next version, if and when that is ready.

That said, there is the free eBook which is about 1/3rd of the actual book. Unfortunately, very few people are reading it from what I see on site stats.

I have good news for everyone.

The meteoric BTC price rises have had two discernible effects on the collector community:
- Interest in collectible coins has increased, on both the buy and sell side
- BTC premiums have largely stayed the same, meaning that USD collector value of Casascius coins have doubled or more.

As usual, Casascius coins receive the bulk of interest.

In the past two months I have seen an increase in website views on www.coinfirm.org that is in line with the increase of interest in BTC. Perhaps more surprisingly, it seems that visitor are spending progressively more time on the website.

To me, this strongly suggests that as more people learn and begin to follow the crypto-space, the more will be drawn to the collector community. This means that if BTC grows significantly, we can exact huge growth in this community/hobby/cottage industry. This also seems to confirm the idea that at least in the case of Casascius coins, prices are determined in BTC / premium percentages and are largely not related to USD valuations. This might change in the future, but it appears that the coins are holding their BTC value well.

These bars are cool, they came from me, and I bought them from the makers of Denarium. They are also pictured in the encyclopedia. I have NO IDEA how many exist.. ive only seen 3.

Thanks for the encouragement. It's really quite amazing how little up to date information there is. Even on Wikipedia there is a 'list of crypto currencies' and it has like 3 dozen entries and is years old.
I have had about 10 future analysts reach out to me, which I think is a great start.

As for the separation of good coins from 'shitcoins', I think that a good policy is to not purposefully 'ban' the mention of any coin.. instead, all mentions would need to present factual information. There could be a way for analysts to rate coins on a 1-5 scale on things like vision, community, development team, marketing, etc. These types of ratings might be a good indicator of which coins have any legitimacy.